Elastic Tabstop

Elastic Tabstop

In text editor applications in computing, elastic tabstops are an alternative way to handle tabstops, with a primary focus on editing source code in computer programming. The idea was first publicly proposed by Nick Gravgaard as a solution for programmers who argue about what kind of indentation is best; tab or space characters. Joel Spolsky wrote a short note giving publicity to this idea.

Elastic tabstops differ from traditional fixed tabstops because columns in lines above and below the "cell" that is being changed are always kept aligned. As the width of text before a tab character changes, the tabstops on adjacent lines are also changed to fit the widest piece of text in that column.

This method has some strengths over the older methods of code indentation, as it saves time for the programmer when he or she arranges the code and allows for proportional fonts in addition to the fixed-width fonts. On the other hand, this approach can make the code look unorganized on editors that do not have support for it, and it requires an indentation style which is interpreted correctly by this feature.